Man mur­dered, body parts miss­ing

VIL­LAGERS in Chipinge’s Manesa area were left shaken last Wed­nes­day fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the body of a man be­lieved to have been mur­dered for rit­ual pur­poses.

The corpse, which was in an ad­vanced state of de­com­po­si­tion, and had some body parts miss­ing, was dis­cov­ered by herds­men near Chiororo Tav­ern.

Chipinge crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions depart­ment spokesman, De­tec­tive As­sis­tant In­spec­tor Daniel Chimhini con­firmed the mur­der. He said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were in progress. “The de­ceased, Try­more Mu­chini, was last seen in Novem­ber 2017 at Tan­ganda Halt bound for South Africa by his brother, Artwell Mu­chini (44) of Manesa Vil­lage in Chief Mutema’s area. Some­time in Fe­bru­ary 2018, the now de­ceased phoned Artwell us­ing a South African line in­di­cat­ing that he was well.

“On March 14 at about 12pm, Mu­nashe Sit­hole (13) of the same vil­lage was herd­ing cat­tle when he came across a dead body.

“He rushed home and alerted other vil­lagers who then made a re­port at Mutema Po­lice Post un­der RRB 344096,’’ he said.

On March 16 de­tec­tives at­tended the scene. A set of tyre marks were ob­served about ten me­tres from the de­ceased body a sign which in­di­cated that the was dumped at the scene.

De­tec­tive As­sis­tant In­spec­tor Chimhini said no ar­rests had been made as yet.

He ap­pealed to mem­bers of the pub­lic to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion which will help them in bring­ing to book the cul­prits.

Vil­lagers have since taken pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to pro­tect their fam­i­lies with some even es­cort­ing their chil­dren to school as cases of rit­ual mur­der rise.